


Candy Store

by Unda



Series: It's the end of the world as we know it [18]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcoholism, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, Underage Drinking, unrequited love OR IS IT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 16:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13298706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unda/pseuds/Unda
Summary: Your name is VRISKA SERKET, and as everyone knows you are a TOTAL BADASS, a GENIUS TACTICIAN, and basically THE ONLY REASON ANYONE IS STILL ALIVE. The point that you’re getting to is you’re kind of a BIG DEAL. You are also losing your goddamn temper.(occurs between chapters 33 and 34)





	Candy Store

_ Are we gonna have a problem? _

_ You got a bone to pick? _

_ You’ve come so far, _

_ Why now are you pulling on my dick? _

_ I’d normally slap your face off, _

_ And everyone here could watch. _

_ But I’m feeling nice. _

_ Here’s some advice. _

_ Listen up, biotch! _

 

Your name is VRISKA SERKET, and as everyone knows you are a TOTAL BADASS, a GENIUS TACTICIAN, and basically THE ONLY REASON ANYONE IS STILL ALIVE. The point that you’re getting to is you’re kind of a BIG DEAL. You are also losing your goddamn temper. 

 

You need to win this game and, to his credit, Karkat is doing his bit well, you only wish the rest of your pieces would cooperate as well. It’s not fair, when you play chess the pawns don’t get a mind of their own and when you used to FLARP there were rules, damnit! But these humans… ugh. 

 

Ever since they died and came back Dave and Rose revealed themselves to be two of your strongest assets and also varying degrees of useless. Dave at least is proving competent with considerable hand holding from his quadrant mates and older siblings but at least he’s getting shit done. You need the Knight of Time if you’re going to win. But do you know what you need more than that?

 

THE GIRL WHO CAN SEE THE FUTURE!

 

And there, right there, she’s leaving again. She keeps vanishing lately for long stretches of time and is irritable as all hell before she goes. You watch Dave chase after her but you’re certain it’ll do no good. You slink out of the battleship’s communal eating room a little while after him. Finding the pair isn’t exactly hard, though you’re not psychic in the sense that you know where people are at all times you do need to be able to find a mind to control it. The minds of humans are shut to you but there’s still a weight on the mental landscape where they are. 

 

You follow the trail and hide in a doorway when you’re close enough to overhear. They’re arguing of course because they do little else these days. Dave holds up reasonably well in trying to help until Rose essentially throws ‘your parents never loved you and your siblings might not either’ in his face which makes him storm off so angrily that he doesn’t even notice you when he stomps right past your hiding place. 

 

With Dave gone you stick your head out and peer around the corner at what little you can see of the room Rose is in from the safety of your hiding spot. You can’t see her but you can see her shadow as she sits down with a sigh and starts drinking something again. 

 

You open the door of the doorway that you’re hiding in and slip inside. It’s a pretty drab meeting room with tables and chairs all lined up and a big presentation screen at the front. You well know that leading any group of people eventually involves dull as hell meetings and bureaucracy. You lean against a table and think, it’s always key to be aware of your goals so what is your goal now?

 

Long term goal: beat the game as much as possible

 

Short term goal: slap Rose Lalonde back into order

 

Good, your short term goal aides your long term one. Can’t progress through the game easily without your seer, can you? That said you can’t simply go in there and smack her about, that likely won’t fix the problem and will more than likely get Kanaya, Rose’s family and their respective quadrants on your case. You’re not keen to get a literal god of time, a girl who is likely a rainbow drinker and also pro-chainsaw, AND the guy who can pull souls out of people’s bodies angry at you. Not that you couldn’t take them, of course, but it’d be a pain. 

 

So change your goal. 

 

New goal: find out why Rose is acting weird and fix it.

 

Better.

 

But how to do it? Well, Rose keeps vanishing a lot lately so finding out why and where she’s going seems like a smart start. You could tail her but that’s so passive and reactive, proactive is way more your style. But it’s hard to beat someone somewhere when you don’t know where they’re going. 

 

Hard, but not impossible. 

 

Your own god tier powers have proven somewhat difficult to manage so far, not that they’re overwhelming but they’re tricksy to use. You’re a thief which means that you take your aspect from someone else, which given how Rose isn’t even using her damn powers right now is all the proof you need that you’re the better person to use them. Now... light is knowledge but also luck. But to work your powers it requires you to make gambles, to roll the dice and take luck from others to aid yourself. Beating luck has always been a thing for you so this isn’t new territory but the framing of it requires a little hard work. 

 

You set your tablet on the table and bring up the map of all of the planets. You rifle through your sylladex for a dice that will work on the screen and hold it in your hand. 

 

Luck of course is subjective, all things are neutral until people have opinions on them. Even someone being alive or dead is good luck or bad luck depending on the viewer. In order for your powers to work on this Rose’s loss must be your gain. 

 

It would be shockingly good luck if you were to shut your eyes and drop this dice on your tablet and for it to land and bounce repeatedly on the screen showing the exact location of where Rose has been sneaking off to. It’s especially light as an aspect that would be revealed as it is truth and knowledge that you’re after. It would also be massively bad luck for her to have her secret outed to you when you can get there before her and investigate what’s going on so you can get the drop on her. How bad that luck is multiplies by how much she doesn’t want you there. It’s good fortune for her if you don’t find it. 

 

And there, that’s the set up you need. Steal Rose’s good fortune and turn it into your own. 

 

You clench your hand around the eight sided dice in your hand and focus. You can feel her not too far away, her mind filled with knowledge and the fortune that she sees and possesses. Reaching out you grab it for yourself and throw the dice in the air. You keep your eyes shut until the dice has stopped bouncing and open your eyes. On the screen is a shot of a section of land on Rose’s planet not too far from her quarter of her house. 

 

You grin and tuck it away. You’re feeling pretty lucky today. 

 

Slipping out of the ship is no problem, the door is still open and everyone else is gathered in the one place. You fly off, leaving a trail of blue glittering dust with every beat of your wings and head right for Rose’s planet. If she thinks she can hide things from you she is very much mistaken.

 

Tracking down the general area of Rose’s hiding place is no sweat to an experienced map reader like yourself and it only takes about five minutes of quick detective work to suss out the cave behind a waterfall. It’s just like treasure hunting back home used to be. 

 

Behind the thematically appropriate waterfall (and if you’re going to credit Lalonde with anything it’s points for  _ style _ ) is a natural cave. Within it is a whole bunch of alchemy equipment from a punch designix through to an actual alchemiter, across the space of the cave is a large sofa pushed up against the rough pale stone wall. The floor is littered with all shapes of purple totems and, more noticeably, empty glass bottles. Absolutely none of them have labels on which certainly doesn’t fit with any of the original or copied supplies that are in the base. 

 

You press a foot down on a bottle and roll it back and forth thoughtfully. Deciding to finally pick it up you swirl the bottle around but the mostly clear fluid left at the bottom inside tells you nothing, sniffing it informs you that it smells BAD but not much else. It absolutely smells bad enough that you’re not putting it in your mouth, no way, no how. 

 

So, Rose has been alchemising things but why bother coming out here to do that? Everything that is alchemised is stored in a central log thanks to Hal’s effort to make sure you don’t all end up doubling up on each other’s work. You even all share grist which seems hugely unfair to you but Karkat overruled you on that one and by now there’s more than enough grist to go around for pretty much anything so you care significantly less. 

 

You pop your tablet out and pull up the log for the alchemiters, it’s helpfully sorted by person so Rose’s history is easy to find. But it’s nothing of interest. New clothes here and there, some human toiletries, a series of experiments before she died where she was combining different troll and human books but that’s about it. There is distinctly no sofa and no large numbers of bottles. 

 

So, secret alchemiter. Rose has somehow made a private one which means she really doesn’t want anyone knowing what she’s making and THAT makes the contents of these bottles far more interesting. Thankfully all of her punched cards are here too so you grab all of them and start jamming them one by one into the alchemiter to see what she has. 

 

The first one you find is a code for an empty glass bottle; boring. The second is a code for one of Dave’s beloved apple juices; snore. The third more interestingly is something from the medkits, rubbing alcohol; now that is more interesting. 

 

Curious you splice the cards for apple juice and the bottle then alchemise the result. That gets you ‘fancy apple juice’ and that bottle distinctly has a label. So whatever Rose is making isn’t apple juice, fancy or otherwise. You pick up the last card here and peer at it, the pattern looks familiar. You take the newly punched card for fancy apple juice and layer the rubbing alcohol card over it, it’s a perfect fit. 

 

You weigh the card in your hand and frown, what do you get if you mix fancy apple juice and rubbing alcohol? Well, what you would get is probably alcohol poisoning and vomiting but what happens when you mix the CONCEPTS? Humans make alcohol for drinking out of all sorts of things, wine is just grape juice plus time, right? So apple juice plus the concept of alcohol makes…

 

You put the finished card into the alchemiter and it flashes up what it will make: ‘BAD APPLE CIDER’. 

 

You slap the button and the alchemiter gifts you with one unlabelled glass bottle filled with pale yellow liquid. You bite the cork out with your teeth and sniff at the liquid. Ugh, it smells just as bad as the first stuff. This has to be alcohol. Mindfang doesn’t drink and you’ve never tasted booze so you don’t actually know what real alcohol smells like but you’re pretty sure this acrid shit is it. And if the number of glass bottles on the floor are any clue that means Rose has been drinking- and drinking a lot. The only drunk human you’ve ever seen in person is Dave when he inadvertently took Roxy’s drink last Halloween, it’s hardly good for the intelligence or rationality of humans to be drunk.

 

Filled with disgust you shove the cork back into the bottle. 

 

You don’t know much about alcohol but you know humans can become addicted to it just like trolls can to consuming sopor or other modified mind altering liquids which usually have a sopor base. You know that her mother was a drunk so Rose really ought to fucking know better. The overwhelming thought surging through your head was that this isn’t goddamn allowed, Rose is BETTER than this. It’s a bitter feeling that curls up your throat. It makes you remember the last time you felt it, when you were young and dreamed of meeting your ancestor that you’d read so much about. Only when you did meet her it was nothing like it was in your head. Mindfang had little interest in your obvious skills or training you to be just like her, it was pretty clear she regarded having not one but two kids hanging around her to be an inconvenience to her previously swashbuckling lifestyle. You were disappointed in her and you’re now disappointed in Rose. 

 

Rose was always so sharp, she could be bright and intuitive but cruel and cutting too. She was smart enough to keep up with you and even get the better of you, she had too much spine to be intimidated in bending to you and you respected that. But this is what makes her weak? Fermented fruit made in a way that even this terrible game calls it bad? It’s… disappointing. 

 

So you have two choices and you have to choose one of them, you can’t stand people who complain about their problems and do nothing about them. You’re not like that, you’re better than that. 

 

Your first choice is to take this information to the others and burn Rose’s life to the ground, punish her for her weakness and never again treat her like an equal. You clearly can’t rely on her in the game like this and so weakness cannot be tolerated, you’re doing it for everyone’s good and if the secret weakling that Rose is suffers for it then all the better. This option pleases the vengeful part of you. 

 

Your second choice is this. Decide that this weakness will not do, that it is out of keeping for Rose and needs to be crushed. You can take it into your own hands to purge this weakness from an otherwise worthy adversary, push her to be better so she can go toe to toe with you once more. Force her into being someone you can respect again. You don’t want a shamed and broken down Rose, or one that slinks out of meetings to come here and get drunk alone. You want the girl who sees ten steps ahead and can help you crush this game under your boot without ever letting you make her your pawn. You want the Rose that argues you down, makes you want to punch her in the face when she one ups you in public but you won’t because that’d mean she  _ wins _ and-

 

And you know how this sounds. It sounds like one of Karkat’s stupid romance books and you don’t want to think about that because Rose is human and as far as you know pretty much no humans are capable of the sort of feelings that you might, possibly, theoretically, be feeling. A treacherous voice in your head points out that Rose’s very sister has a pitch soulmate connection with one of your friends so it’s not impossible…

 

You pinch the bridge of your nose. You know if Terezi was here she would suggest flipping a coin because that’s her answer to eeeeeeeeverything. But sometimes when you have a chance to choose between two options you know which one you want more the second you go to choose. 

 

You set the bottle back on the alchemiter and stare at it sullenly. So you’re decided on what to do. 

 

As luck would have it Rose chooses that moment to dart through the waterfall and lands on the floor of the cave, flicking water out of her short yellow hair. You debate just straight up lobbing the bottle at her head but she spots you before you can decide one way or the other. Her eyes widen with surprise but she almost instantly schools her features back into merely annoyed, like you’re inconveniencing her not outwitting her. 

 

“What’re you doing here?” she asks, folding her arms across her chest. 

 

“What’re YOUUUUUUUU doing here?” you demand, waving a finger at her. 

 

“Unless I am shockingly lost, this is my planet and I can be anywhere I like on it.” Rose says airily and combs her fingers through her wet hair. 

 

“Including setting up some kind of- of alcohol factory on it?” you accuse. Rose’s eyes drift to the full bottle of BAD APPLE CIDER that you put down earlier and then back to you. 

 

“Distillery is the word that you’re looking for, I believe.” Rose says instead. 

 

“You need to explain yourself.” you order her. Rose looks fantastically unintimidated. 

 

“I’m your leader!” you insist and at that Rose laughs harshly. 

 

“You’re really not, Karkat’s the leader and everyone knows it. Now get out of here.” Rose says, pointing her finger at the waterfall again. She’s trying to bait you, to distract you, like she did Dave. 

 

“We’re both the leader, I get the do all of the important things and he does all of the boring people shit.” you sneer at her. 

 

“Is that so?” Rose asks with a smile, “Because to me it looks like he’s the leader and you’re the guard dog that he sics on people when he needs some brute force.” 

 

You open your mouth to shout at her but this is obviously a fucking distraction technique and you’re not going to let Lalonde, much less a compromised Lalonde, get the better of you. 

 

“You’re so desperate to hide your obvious alcoholism that you’ll risk tearing the leadership of our group apart and risking lives. Good to know, it gives me an idea of how much you’ve fucked up.” you say instead and, with glee, watch the obvious anger flash over her face. 

 

“You don’t know shit, Vriska. I’m not an alcoholic, you don’t know me or my situation, now get out before I  _ throw _ you out.” Rose snarls, drawing her needle wands. You catch your fluorite octet between your fingers and grin at her.

 

“You feel that lucky, huh?” you ask slyly. 

 

“Get out.” she orders, pointing her needle at the waterfall. 

 

“No, I’m not going to let this get worse. You need to shape your shit up and if I leave you’re just going to keep doing what you’re doing.” you say. And you’re sure it’s the case, you’re no seer of light but you know this much.

 

“Shape my-” Rose shakes her head and backs up for a second. When she finally looks back up at you her eyes are burning. 

 

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, you don’t know what I’ve been through, you couldn’t  _ possibly understand _ !” Rose snaps, waving her needle at you. You roll your eyes and press your free hand daintily to your cheek. 

 

“ _ Oh, I’m Rose Lalonde and my pain is so special no one else could ever comprehend how uniquely tragic my life has been.” _ you simper. 

 

“I’m going to fucking shoot you.” she hisses. 

 

“Get over yourself, you don’t even have it the worst of everyone here.” you snort. Rose’s eye twitches. 

 

“My parents are DEAD!” Rose shouts furiously. 

 

“Boo fucking hoo, my mom’s dead too!” you yell back. 

 

“I SAW YOUR MOTHER HALF AN HOUR AGO!” Rose screeches.

 

“Ugh, your so stupid! That’s not my mother, she’s my  _ ancestor _ . That might be the same thing for Earth hatched trolls but not Alternian ones! I had a mother and she’s dead now and your mother just abandoned you, I had to murder mine!” you snap. 

 

Rose stares at you, her needle lowering. 

 

“What?” she asks quietly. 

 

“Your supposed soulmate had a mother too, did she tell you that?” you challenge her and from the expression on her face you can tell the answer is no. 

 

“Hah, so much for soulmates. My mother was a giant spider lusus and unlike your mother who was just kind of an absent asshole mine needed me for everything, without me she would starve. And I had to round up food for her, namely other trolls. I had to murder people to stop my mother dying but you don’t hear  _ me _ crying about it or resorting to… to  _ this _ !” you say, waving your hand at the bottles on the floor. 

 

“You’re a murderer.” Rose says softly. 

 

“Don’t give me that, I know full well you tried to kill your father and the only reason you didn’t is because you got beaten to the punch. And you can’t tell me if the lives of your precious twin or your other siblings were on the line you wouldn’t carve a bloody swathe through the world to keep them alive.” you tell her. Rose grits her teeth and looks away from you but she doesn’t deny it, sometimes she seems to you like she’s more troll than human. 

 

“At least your brother could claim he was tortured, he’s at least got that ahead of the rest of us but aside from being kind of a baby-” you say and suddenly find a needle pointing in your face, you have to cross your eyes to see the tip. 

 

“You leave Dave out of this.” Rose snarls and you hold up your hands. How does Sollux put up with that?

 

“I was murdered.” Rose says, jutting her chin up at you. There’s still the pale white line across her neck of where her throat was slit, you at least managed to roll your dice for a gun and shot yourself through the heart when you went god tier. 

 

“I had to kill myself not just passively die, you don’t win there.” you counter. 

 

“I spent months dead in the afterlife thinking I was never coming back here.” she adds. 

 

“You mean you got a holiday but I’ve been having to deal with all of this constantly, you’re still better off than even me. You’ve no excuse for all of this.” you say. 

 

Rose fully lowers her needle and folds her arms turning away from you somewhat. It leaves you not knowing quite what to say so, without any other option you just keep talking. 

 

“You’re smart and ruthless, we need you and your powers here. If we can’t count on you because-”

 

“You’re right.” Rose interrupts. 

 

“Of course I am.” you say even though you’re not sure what she thinks you’re right about. Rose still stares at the rough but still pastel marble walls of the cave. 

 

“It was better there than here.” Rose says after a pause. 

 

“In the afterlife?” you ask. She nods. 

 

“It was better there. I missed people, of course I missed them and I felt bad that we couldn’t help and I won’t deny that. But I hate these powers, I hate having to fight everything and nobody fucking asked me if I wanted to be brought back to life because I  _ didn’t _ !” Rose shouts but she’s not shouting at you. 

 

“I had Dave with me and he was sad but adjusting, we were fine goddamnit! I didn’t want this! I didn’t want to come back seeing  _ everything _ . Do you know what this godforsaken power is like? I see  _ everything _ I can’t turn it off ever!” Rose yells, whirling around to look at you. 

 

“I’m not sure omniscience is a curse.” you point out. 

 

“Oh, oh really?” Rose laughs, she walks closer to you again and suddenly grabs a fist full of your shirt. You drop your dice and a weapon forms in your hand. 

 

“I ought to alchemise you things.” She says slowly and the hair on the back of your neck stands up on end at the quiet tone of her voice that still radiate loathing. 

 

“Change every movie you watch out for one where the subtitles are always on and they’re five minutes ahead, have pages inserted into every book you read telling you what the plot twists are before you can even read them. Every conversation I have I’ve had it before but I’ve got to feign like I care at all because when it happens for real I know it all already and I can’t tell them to go away!” she hisses in your face. 

 

That sounds… really shitty actually. She might have something there. 

 

You consider Rose, her furious lavender eyes narrowed at you. One of her fists is in your shirt and you’re pretty sure that her weapon is still in the other. She could kill you, say that you attacked her and everyone would believe her over you. Maybe you’d come back, maybe you wouldn’t. But… 

 

“So how does this conversation end?” you ask curiously. 

 

Roses’ eyes dart away from you. 

 

“I can’t tell with you. Probably because you’re light too, or a thief, too changeable. It’s just static, I can tune you out because I never get anything anyway.” she says with a small shake of her head. 

 

“So you can tune it out, you just need to try harder.” you reason. 

 

Anger contorts her features and she raises her other hand, she still has her weapon after all. 

 

“Try harder? You think I hadn’t-” she points her needle in your face and you jab yours in her ribs. Right in her stomach, pointing up through her thoracic cavity in what would for sure be a fatal shot. 

 

“Ah-ah.” you laugh and flash her a smug grin. 

 

Rose looks down slowly, the weapon you pulled was a needle just the same as hers. 

 

“What’re the odds?” you say. 

 

“Assuming no duplication in your system, one in sixteen million, seven hundred and seventy seven thousand, two hundred and sixteen.” Rose says after a moment. You wonder if she worked that out now or before. 

 

“No one said that this wasn’t hard. This game, being gods, dying; you’re right being dead is easier because of course it is. I’m not mad because you’re finding it hard I’m mad because you’re giving up and you’re supposed to be better than that.” you insist. 

 

Rose doesn’t say anything, just lowers her weapon and puts it away. 

 

“How come you aren’t doing what Dave did? Talked to people about it, I mean. I know you don’t have a moirail but you humans are all pale sluts and you’ve got siblings and a soulmate.” you ask, the question has been bubbling in your head the whole time. Rose hasn’t turned to anyone about this, evidently even Kanaya has struck out with getting her to really talk about this and you know how meddlesome fussyfangs can be. 

 

“And have people look at me like they look at Dave? No thank you. I can handle this on my own.” she snorts. 

 

You look pointedly around the room at all of the bottles and her secret alcohol making equipment. 

 

“Great job.” you say flatly, Rose shoots you a withering look. 

 

“I can help, there must be a future out there where you learn to control your sight to screen the unimportant shit out. I can manipulate things to steer you on that path, bend fortune that way.” you offer. 

 

“I don’t want your pity.” Rose says skeptically and you grind your teeth at her words. Pity?! Does she think- GODDDDDDDD humans are stupid!

 

“Not gonna happen.” you tell her firmly. 

 

Rose appears to contemplate this. 

 

“But,” you say and hold up your hand to stop her, “only if you cut this shit out.” 

 

Rose looks around the room in silence and then after a minute she walks over to her alchemiter and jams her hand down on the control pad. A bottle of BAD CIDER spawns and then another right on top of it, then more and more, piling up into a great heap as each new one spills down over the previous ones so that they’re flowing off of the platform and bouncing across the floor. She could have just said no! What the hell?!

 

Rose reaches down to grab a bottle off of the floor and uncorks it with her teeth. Well, fine, if she’s going to be like that you’re leaving! You storm over to the waterfall at the mouth of the cave and hesitate, furious that she’s choosing this over your selfless offer to actually help her. 

 

A sound you can’t place catches your attention and you turn to see Rose standing there, looking almost bored, as she holds a lit match to what looks like a torn up tshirt jammed in the neck of one of the bottles. It catches alight almost instantly. 

 

Rose walks slowly towards you and then without even looking tosses the bottle over her shoulder toward the pile of other bottles. It shatters on them and suddenly fire is everywhere. 

 

“We should go.” Rose says simply and flies past you through the waterfall. You only just make it out before the force of the explosion shoots you out. Black smoke is curling through gaps in the water as you fly above it with Rose who is idly picking wet strands of hair out of her face. 

 

“You’d better be right about this.” Rose says and then flies off, leaving you behind with the burning and destroyed cave at your back. 

 

Well, damn.  

**Author's Note:**

> Two Heathers musical named sidefics? Say it isn't so!


End file.
